Hillary took a 10 point lead over Obama in Pennsylvania last night, showing Obama still has trouble connecting with the middle class- especially in a place where the Clintons have strong roots and connections to local politicians.

But it’s not enough for Hillary to overcome the lead in votes that Obama has nationwide, and unless something impossibly catastrophic should happen to Obama in the near future, there’s virtually no chance that she will ever be able to make up that difference.

So with the race continuing on further still, and each Democratic Candidate throwing knockout style punches at each other with neither going down for the count, it will get only uglier still until something or someone puts a stop to it.

With the super-delegates still waiting in the wings to make their final decisions, will they side with Hillary who just refuses to die and who plays largely to the usual Dem base, or will they side with Obama and all the unusual votes he carries with him- hoping the base will fall in place behind any candidate come November- so long as it’s not a Republican?

And speaking of Republicans, what is John McCain up to while the Dems go tooth and claw?

…McCain, who compared the struggles of Youngstown to his own back-from-the-dead campaign, insisted that in the end workers would be better off through retraining and education programs in technology he has promised them as president.

“I can’t tell you that these jobs are ever going to come back to this magnificent part of the country,” Mr. McCain told another questioner, Sam Carbon, a student at Youngstown State, who asked Mr. McCain about how he planned to save American jobs. “But I will commit to giving these workers a second chance. They need it, they deserve it. I know that’s small comfort to you, but I can’t look you in the eye and tell you those steel mills are coming back.”

Mr. McCain, who was on the second day of a weeklong tour to the country’s “forgotten places” while his two Democratic competitors battled for the nomination in Pennsylvania, sought to strike an empathetic note in the midst of his sober message.

“I’ve been left recently in the unfamiliar position of facing no opposition within my own party,” Mr. McCain said in remarks before he took questions at the public forum, which was held at the university. “And as you might recall, it was a different story last year, when I could claim the unqualified support of Cindy and my mother — and my mom was starting to keep her options open.” (Cindy is Mr. McCain’s wife.)

“Back then,” Mr. McCain continued, “there were some very impressive front-runners, there was a very formidable second tier of contenders, and then there was me.”

Despite being written off as “a hopeless cause,” Mr. McCain said, “a person learns along the way that if you hold on, if you don’t quit no matter what the odds, sometimes life will surprise you. Sometimes you get a second chance, and opportunity turns back your way. And when it does, we are stronger and readier because of all that we had to overcome.”

Mr. McCain added: “I bring up all this today, my friends, because the men and women of Youngstown know what it feels like to be counted out. You’ve been written off a few times yourselves, in the competition of the market. You know how it feels to hear that good things are happening in the American economy — they’re just not happening to you.”

Afterward, Mr. Carbon, a Republican, said that Mr. McCain’s answer had partly satisfied him, and that he would vote for him in November. He said he understood that manufacturing jobs would not return, but “I was looking for more about his views on tariffs and taxes on imported things.”

McCain’s vote for, and continued support of NAFTA, which is a program many in places like Youngstown hold responsible for the loss of American working class jobs in the first place, left many bitter, and some believe was a cause for him losing primaries to Mitt Romney who spoke out for change of NAFTA in areas that had been hit hard by the loss of factory jobs. But with talk of re-education and replacement jobs for those workers, he may win some of those folks back.

Of course… education is not exactly something America is excelling at, at this very moment- something no Candidate is really talking about.

Popularity: 3% [?]

And it’s no surprise, they wind up looking quite foolish.
Last night on WWE’s wrestling program Raw, the candidates had been invited, and accepted the offer, to appear on the show and address the audience as part of WWE’s “Smackdown your vote” campaign, and in a last ditch bid for a few more votes in the candidate’s media blitz the night before the biggest of the remaining primary elections.

I don’t think there’s much I can say that showing the clips themselves won’t say better.

And then to make it all the more ridiculous- WWE went ahead and scheduled a match between “Hillary Clinton” w/ “Bill” and “Barack Obama”.

Admittedly… the Bill impersonator was pretty funny.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Nope, it’s more “stay the course” and “wait and see” from the man leading the way in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus.

So what exactly is going to happen in Iraq?

(Petraeus) was careful to emphasize that any withdrawals — after a recommended 45-day halt this summer — would be based on security conditions at the time, Petraeus’ acknowledgment went slightly further than his stubborn refusal Tuesday to discuss the level of U.S. troops after the July pause.

“I can foresee a reduction beyond the 15 [brigades], yes, sir,” Petraeus said, referring to the number of military units that will remain in Iraq once the surge ends in July. “We have a number of months and a number of substantial actions to take before then, but we are already identifying areas that we think are likely candidates for that.”

Of course that left some in the House Armed Services Committee with grave concerns.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the committee’s chairman, said U.S. military and intelligence leaders have argued any future terrorist attack is likely to come from Al Qaeda operatives based in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“When looking at the needs in Afghanistan, the effort in Iraq, however important, is putting at risk our ability to decisively defeat those most likely to attack us,” Skelton said.

So with the count of troops in Iraq not unlikely to remain the same through to the elections in November, what does this mean for the Cadidates?

For the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has tethered his political fate to the war, the freeze could hurt or help him, said Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.

The U.S. military role in Iraq “will constantly remind voters about a Republican problem that is unpopular, controversial and seen as a policy failure,” Zelizer said. At the same time, Democrats shouldn’t assume the war issue will break their way.

“Americans often support hawks or military figures to get the nation out of messy wars,” he said, citing Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War in 1953, and Richard Nixon, who brought most U.S. forces home from Vietnam 20 years later.

Obama, Clinton

McCain and the two Democratic presidential candidates — Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York — addressed Iraq yesterday as Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared before two Senate committees.

Clinton, 60, said it was time to begin an “orderly process” of withdrawal. Obama said setting a timetable for a pullout would force Iraqi leaders to resolve sectarian disputes.

The Democratic rivals are responding to weak public support for the Iraq war. Sixty percent of all Americans favor setting a timetable for removing U.S. forces, while 35 percent support keeping a significant number of troops there until the situation improves, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll taken Feb. 21 through Feb. 24.

McCain, 71, reiterated his view that the U.S. troop buildup ordered by Bush last year has been a success and that a premature American withdrawal would be “reckless and irresponsible.”

No `Abyss’

“We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” McCain said.

At the same time, McCain sought to refute Democratic criticisms that he supported an unlimited U.S. commitment and was overly optimistic about the course of the conflict.

McCain said his goal was “an Iraq that no longer needs American troops.” And he elicited testimony from Petraeus that was critical of the performance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki and Iraqi security forces in fighting against Shiite militias in Basra.

Clinton, like McCain a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also used her moment in the spotlight to counter critics of her position on Iraq — in this case, McCain and his assertion that those supporting withdrawal were irresponsible.

“It might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again at such tremendous cost,” Clinton said.

The administration and its supporters “often talk about the cost of leaving Iraq, yet ignore the greater cost of continuing the same failed policy,” she said.

`Strategic Blunder’

Obama, 46, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a “massive strategic blunder.”

“Our military is overstretched and the Pentagon has acknowledged it,” he said. “When you have finite resources, you’ve got to define your goals tightly and modestly.”

One way or the other, with the economy recently being the focal point of election debate leaving all other issues as footnotes, Iraq is likely to get a fair amount of press in the near future.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Please excuse my failure to disguise disgust towards this guy….

At a VFW in Kansas City, Missouri, McCain called our countries care of it’s veterans a disgrace. That’s certainly true. Who would argue otherwise?

He went on to say that if he’s elected, McCain will do everything within his power to ensure that veterans receive “the highest quality health, mental health and rehabilitative care in the world.”

Excuse me, Sen. McCain. May I remind you for a moment that you:

• Voted AGAINST an amendment providing $20 billion to the VA’s medical facilities. [5/4/06]
• Voted AGAINST providing $430 million to the VA for outpatient care “and treatment for veterans,” one of only 13 senators to do so. [4/26/06]
• Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.5 billion by closing corporate loopholes. [3/14/06]
• Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.8 billion by ending “abusive tax loopholes.” [3/10/04]
• Voted AGAINST a $650 million increase in veterans’ medical care funding. [8/1/01]

If he didn’t vote for the care of our nation’s veterans in the past, why would he endorse it as the President?

Food for thought.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Republican National Committee has been sending out the following article written by Zachary Roth from the Columbia Journalism Review.  Now, I know I for one have taken issue with statements attributed to Prez hopeful John McCain in regards to the length of time troops could wind up staying in Iraq, but at the same time, many of us have been a bit misdirected in how exactly he said it, read on-

Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in January that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. …

But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters — if not outright lying to them — about exactly what McCain said. …

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. …

Nevertheless, back in February, Obama said: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.” …

Today, for instance, he said: “We can’t afford to stay in Iraq, like John McCain said, for another hundred years.” … In other words, he’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind. …

To be clear, if Obama wants to take issue with McCain’s willingness to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years in any capacity, that’s obviously his right. But that’s not the same as misleading voters about what McCain is proposing …

True.  McCain isn’t saying he wants to stay in Iraq for the next hundred years.  Just that he’s willing to do so.

Glad we’ve got that cleared up.  Semantics are wonderful fun aren’t they?  I for one am not swayed to McCain’s side by this.  Because not only do I not want to see our troops (self included) in Iraq for the next hundred years.  I’m not willing to vote for a man who’s willing to have that happen, regardless of the capacity.

Popularity: 4% [?]